The County Board of Supervisors agreed Tuesday to bump up property taxes by an average of $11 this year in an effort to rescue the health services department from mounting debt.

The increase to Measure B will generate about $45 million in added funding this year, the bulk of which will be used to offset a $93 million deficit due largely to treating uninsured patients in Los Angeles County, officials said.

“Realistically, you cannot take care of that many uninsured people without some assistance from the federal government,” said Supervisor Yvonne Brathwaite Burke, who voted in favor of the increase.

Supervisors approved the rate hike – which amounts to 0.0072 cents per square foot of improved property – by a vote of 4-1.

Supervisor Mike Antonovich cast the lone dissenting vote, although Supervisors Zev Yaroslavsky and Don Knabe, who represents the South Bay, said they were frustrated by the Department of Health Services’ lack of any plan to offset such a large deficit.

“To me this just represents a shell game. It’s not really dealing with the systemic issues with the department,” Knabe said. “You still have not given us a deficit management plan.”

The Measure B increase can only be used to fund trauma, emergency and bioterrorism response efforts, as mandated by voters in 2002. It is a small piece within the Department of Health Services’ larger budget picture.

Health officials say the cost to provide medical coverage for indigent and uninsured residents has risen by 11 percent every year since 2003, from $280 million to $383 million. At the same time, federal and state funding has been slashed and more cuts are pending from the state this year, officials said.

The deficit for the following fiscal year,

$485 million, is even scarier, according to a report by the county’s chief executive officer, William Fujioka.

Health services was slated to present a budget report at Tuesday’s Board of Supervisors meeting, but postponed it until September.

“I think Supervisor Knabe’s frustration is shared to one extent or another by all of us, but that doesn’t change the fact that in a global sense, something needs to be done,” Yaroslavsky said. “We need this now. We need this (increased tax) in this fiscal year.”

The Measure B tax, which now generates about $142 million a year, helped save the trauma center at County Harbor-UCLA Medical Center near Torrance – the South Bay’s only trauma unit for serious injuries.

Part of the proceeds from this year’s increase will go to private hospitals with trauma centers that have had to care for more patients since the closure of Martin Luther King Jr.-Harbor Hospital a year ago and other trauma closures over the past five years.

Executives from these trauma centers in Long Beach, Downey, Los Angeles and elsewhere testified during Tuesday’s hearing about the dire need to shore up funding and ward off more hospital closures in the county’s fragile trauma network.

“These are our partners, and they’re picking up our work load,” Knabe said. “We need to help them provide care for our patients.”

These private facilities, according to Fujioka’s report, have seen their cost to care for the uninsured rise by about 8 percent a year.

The private facilities will also be able to apply for federal matching funds, which would bring in about $15 million total for the county, officials said.

The increase in Measure B will be retroactive to July 1, and will appear on this year’s bill. The average property owner with a 1,500-square-foot home will now pay a total of about $55 for Measure B, according to the county.

Melissa Evans is the city editor of the Long Beach Press-Telegram. Prior to joining the Long Beach paper in 2011, she was a reporter covering health care, religion, city government and social issues for newspapers in the Los Angeles area, the Bay Area and the East Coast. She has a master's degree in theology from Loyola Marymount University, a bachelor's degree in journalism from San Diego State, and has completed several fellowships in journalism. She has lived in the Long Beach area since 2007.

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